Final thoughts for now: The Buium snub bugs me and will always bug me, but I’m going to refrain from being too pissed about the rest of the draft for another couple years. I think there is a decent amount of potential in most of these picks, and I can squint and see plausible scenarios for most of them, even if they’re not the most likely outcomes (the most likely outcome is that they all bust, even the ones I wanted in rounds 2+).
I remember being very pleased with the 2015 draft, thinking we had secured our franchise defender in Provorov, top line forward in Konecny when he fell (at least that one worked), and taken high upside shots on David Kase and Cooper Marody. Similar in 2016, picks like Laberge, Allison, Hogberg, and Laczinsky all felt like solid shots at later round talent. Only one of those picks actually worked.
To use David Kase as an example, that felt like a great pick on draft day. And it was a solid bet on an undervalued player, but he’s been as useful as Tyrell Goulbourne, and Kaprizov was taken later that round.
Similar, Wade Allison also felt like a pretty good pick. But you had Filip Hronek one selection later, which would have felt like a total waste on draft day.
I don’t think they did themselves many favors, but I will give this some time before declaring it indicative of a total organizational failure. It could be — and probably will be — but I’ve followed too many drafts to do that today.
www.nytimes.com
which is fair but a bad way to utilise a 2nd rounder.
